1930s American society. An unstable, prejudiced time and place for suffering Americans everywhere. Between the years of 1929 and 1939, the U.S was heavily oppressed by the Great Depression, the largest recession the country had ever experienced, which was evident in its effects on the American lifestyle. Along with the economic struggle many were facing, heatwaves of narrow minded values and distorted ideals were also overcoming America’s society. Racism, sexism and classism did not come lightly in these times. In the heated heart of fictional town, Maycomb, lie these themes of prejudice. These ideas are pushed and reinforced through the novel, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee. Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, the adolescent protagonist and narrator of this story, sees every situation she is placed in, with curiosity and openness, allowing the reader to follow the storyline as she tells it how it is. Without providing a stained or biased perspective, the reader is able to conceive their own judgements and perceivement of the story’s events. Lee accurately uses the setting of a economically and morally strained town during the 1930s in America to present her ideas and themes of prejudice many were subject to experiencing back then.

‘To Kill A Mockingbird‘ takes place in the tired old town of Maycomb, Alabama. Although Maycomb is not an existent town, it serves as an epitome setting for what life and society was presumably like in a small, exhausted southern town such as this one. With discrimination present around almost every corner, it gives the reader a historically realistic sense of people finding hatred between differences. One of the themes displayed in the novel, that especially enforces this, is the racism the town endured. Between the years this novel is based (1933-1935), racism was prosecuted through laws of segregation known as Jim Crow laws. These laws, found in the Southern United States, fed on the ideal of coloured people being deemed inferior and therefore not being allowed the basic human rights that white people were given. State and local laws separated coloured and white people through public transport, schools, miscegenation, and more. This story, in particular, represents the lack of justice coloured people were given, especially in the eyes of the strongly opinionated public. TKAM follows the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman. From the beginning of the case it is clear what is to happen, Tom guilty or not, will lose this trial because of his skin colour and that is as clear as black and white. Atticus Finch, Scout’s father and lawyer on behalf of Tom’s case, is set on doing what is ethically right throughout the story even if it goes against the town’s racially biased judgments, however staying aware that, “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life.” When Atticus says “our courts”, he refers to the unfair jury and public presented in the bigoted opinions of the deep south states they are based in. It is implied numerous times throughout the novel that race and skin colour does have an effect on the treatment of someone, and this was especially apparent in legal cases, as presented in the novel. “The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.” A similar case to this, in the real world, is the case of Emmett Till. Emmett was a 14 year old African-American boy, accused of hollering at a white woman in a grocery store, in Mississippi. As a black person, he was met with brutality instead of reasoning and was later lynched by a group of white men, including the husband of the woman that allegedly got hollered at. This case is a real life representation of the discrimination coloured people were faced with, showing that the events of the novel were in fact very realistic for the setting they were placed in.

America in the 1930s was a striving time for gender stereotypes and inequality. Gender roles mostly consisted of men being given the few jobs the Great Depression offered due to the traditional breadwinner role they fell under, while women, if not employed, were often found carrying out the household and maternal tasks they were expected to sustain. Women were also illustrated as a southern belle, a stock character representative of the ‘desirable’ traits of a young woman of American South’s upper socioeconomic class. Many were an exception to these stereotypes, although these were the most common. Harper Lee explores these traditional gender roles in this setting with the presence of Aunt Alexandra, a near perfect example of a southern woman, always attempting to ‘correct’ Scout on either her attire or attitude. A connection between the southern setting and subtle sexism in TKAM is displayed in Scout’s narration, “I walked home with Dill and returned in time to overhear Atticus saying to Aunty, “…in favor of Southern womanhood as much as anybody, but not for preserving polite fiction at the expense of human life,”…” By referring to southern womanhood as polite fiction, Atticus touches on the idea that the portrayal of southern womanhood, furthermore the southern belle stereotype, is only a social construct used to make life run easier rather than a part of someone’s true personality.

Class prejudice was a very common matter throughout the years of the Great Depression. Although almost every American in the country was affected by the effects of this economic slump, the 1930s quickly manifested a harsher hierarchy for America’s society. Forms of class discrimination were shown through rankings of wealth and social status, and this remains a evident theme in the town of Maycomb. Along with the racial segregation, Maycomb is also geographically separated by class. Families of higher social status are situated near the centre of town, while the further away you get, families of lower class are found. Whether class is distinguished by wealth, race or rumours, it is somehow shown through separation. As said by Jem Finch, Scout’s older brother and a citizen of higher class, “There’s four kinds of folks in the world. There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes.” Aunt Alexandra also highlights this theme through her discriminatory attitude towards the Cunninghams when Scout asks if she can play with their kid, Walter Cunningham. Aunt Alexandra’s reasoning behind saying no is simply because “they’re not our kind of folks”. Referring back to Jem’s explanation of the separation between the ‘folks’ of Maycomb, Aunt Alexandra believes that “he-is-trash” and will not allow Scout to “pick up his habits and learn Lord-knows-what”, from someone who is of lower class to them.

The Maycomb mayhem illustrated in this novel serves as a historically accurate pinpoint for what the Deep South was like for those disadvantaged in the eyes of prejudice. 1930s American society appeared to be densely concentrated in finding hatred between differences, and this was utilised through Harper Lee’s themes of prejudice. Racism displayed through acts of legal isolation and discrimination, sexism through stereotypes derived off idealism and class prejudice through the socio economic issues and separation of status. All themes of prejudice implement senses of superior and inferior, which is reinforced through the setting of the American 1930s.